It was morning again. Luka glanced down from his top bunk. His roommate, Joe, just left for breakfast. Last night he listened as a kitchen knife Joe stole slid over the small of Joe's wrist. He heard him wince. Luka could see a bit of the blood still on his bedsheet. Joe didn't get adopted again. He was sixteen.

Luka sat up from bed and spent a few seconds absentmindedly swinging his legs. Then, he jumped.

He landed as he always did, flat on the right side of his face with his chest hitting the ground face first. Luka could feel the air getting pushed out of his lungs. He never used his hands to break the fall. It would defeat the purpose. Luka stayed still on the ground, hearing his heartbeat. Nothing. 

With a disappointed sigh, he stood up and brushed off his clothes. Gonna be late for breakfast, he thought to himself, as he walked over to the staircase leading down to the dinner table. A younger orphan left a toy on the staircase, a toy truck. Luka didn't see it and slipped, his heel hitting it.

"Oh," he managed to mutter before falling on his back and rolling down the staircase. His body was limp, and his face showed only a slight shock. His eyes were blank. 

The other orphans jumped. When Luka looked towards them, Joe was looking back, surprised. Luka took notice of the sixth band-aid Joe had on his right wrist. He wondered if the knife Joe stole had rust on the blade; that would kill him off for sure. Maybe I should look for that knife too, maybe it would help me, he thought.

The Lady who owned the orphanage bolted out of her chair and rushed to his side. "Luka, are you alright? You're bleeding from the mouth! How did that happen?" she cried out, kneeling down next to him. 

"I jumped off my bed this morning, as I usually do at this time of day," Luka replied honestly, only then tasting the metallic blood in his mouth. He wiped it off with the back of his hand.

"Not again, Luka!" the Lady said, her tone of voice tired. "Can you get up?"

Luka tried to sit up, but he was down on the ground. He looked at the Lady with his blank eyes. "I believe the answer is a negative," he said.

"Stop talking smart to me. I'm tired of this," the Lady sighed, frustrated. She turned towards the table and pointed at Joe. "You, roommate. Get him to the clinic to get his back checked. I knew I should have carpeted those stairs," she ordered, muttering the last sentence to herself. She got up with a grunt and walked back to her chair. 

Joe got up immediately and went to his 12 year old roommate of almost two years. The habit of jumping off the bed began a week after Joe became his roommate. Joe's first roommate got adopted. Luka's first roommate died of a fever.

Joe was tall and lean with jet black hair and sky blue eyes, his skin pale as paper. He would have been considered attractive if it weren't for the dark, sunken shadows under his eyes. Luka, meanwhile, always found that they accented his eyes quite perfectly. 

Without a nagging word, Joe carried Luka to the orphanage's infirmary. This happened so often to the point that Joe was not embarrassed anymore that he was carrying another guy like a man carried his new wife.

"Hey, Joe," Luka said.

"Hmm?" Joe glanced down for a second as he continued to walk towards the infirmary. 

"You should have covered the blood stain with the blanket, or at least got it to the cleaners before Lady sees it. You know how she freaks out." Luka said to him almost teasingly, patting Joe's bandaged wrist.

"Ouch. Don't touch it yet, it's still raw. It hurts, man." Joe replied, wincing.

"Of course it does," Luka said, turning away from him. "It should hurt."

"Again, Luka?" the Nurse said to him as Luka rested on a cot. "Didn't I tell you not to purposely hurt yourself?"

"As a certified nurse of even a run-down orphanage like this, I'm surprised that you have short term memory loss," Luka replied in his usual cold tone. He reached out for the mug of chocolate Nurse put down for him a moment ago and brought it to his lips.

Nurse's eyes widened. "Wait, don't drink that! It's still hot!" she warned him, but Luka had already started drinking. To him, it was just chocolate. The mug was so hot that the fingers of his hand that didn't hold the handle were turning bright red. When Luka finished, he let out a satisfied breath of air, his mouth red and his tongue burned.

"Now look what you did to yourself!" Nurse cried out, jumping out of her seat and grabbing a towel soaked in ice water for emergency burns. She immediately pushed it towards Luka's mouth, the ice burning her skin so quickly she dropped it as soon as Luka had it in his hands.

Luka held the towel and looked at Nurse. "What am I supposed to do with this?" he asked her blankly.

"Hold it to your mouth, of course! You've burned yourself!"

"Burned?" Luka asked, raising an eyebrow.  "What's that?"

Nurse opened her mouth to reply, but she realized that no matter how long she explained what being burnt by hot chocolate meant, Luka would never understand, because he didn't know what hot felt like in the first place.

"Just put it on your mouth, unless you want your lips to swell up" Nurse replied instead, turning her back to him and massaging her frozen fingers. Luka shrugged and put the towel to his lips, patting it casually.

Luka was starting to fall asleep when he heard Joe enter their room. It had been a week since the staircase incident. It was also Adoption Day again. Luka didn't hang around for any interviews with parents; the Lady had given up on trying to convince him since his tenth birthday. Joe attended though, as always.

Luka watched with a half-closed eye as Joe closed the door behind him. A bit of the moonlight seeped through the windowpanes. There was a fresh new cut on his right arm. Joe stood there, his face covered by the shadows, silent. The moonlight fell like a theatre spotlight on his wounded arm. Luka watched silently as drops of blood fell to the ground every ten seconds. Joe must have known he was awake, but he didn't say anything.

The room was quiet, except for the whispering drips of blood like easy water on the wooden floor.

Joe stood silently, his hair a mess, as if he had been running in the rain and tried to dry it off with a leaf blower. He stared at the empty space, his face blank and a ghostly pale. Luka sighed and sat up, the mattress slightly creaking. He took out a band-aid and put it in his pajama pocket. Then, he jumped off and landed on his feet. Joe took no notice of him.

Luka went to Joe and looked up at him. He was a lot taller and older than him, but more often than not it was Luka that took care of him, especially during times like this. When Joe would not meet Luka's eyes, the young boy gently took Joe's bleeding arm and placed the band-aid on the new wound. The wound was not all the way covered, as it was longer than the others. But it was the least Luka could do. He patted it lightly, hesitated, and then gave it a kiss.

Then, Joe began to focus back on reality. He blinked and looked towards Luka. Seeing him, he gave a small smile and patted his head with his free hand.

"Hey, it's late. Aren't you supposed to be asleep by now?" he asked him. He managed to force a smile, yet Luka could tell it hurt every facial muscle he had to do it. 

"Do you want to talk?" Luka answered. He couldn't say it himself, but he didn't want to see Joe coming back night after night from wherever he goes with a new cut. He was running out of band-aids to give.

Joe's smile faded and he sighed. He didn't take any notice that Luka was still holding his arm. In fact, he raised his wounded arm slightly so that Luka's hand would slide down and touch his. Luka looked at their hands, now intertwined.

"Do you need any more band-aids?" Luka asked innocently. Joe shook his head, almost feeling amused. "No. Let's just talk," he replied. They walked to Joe's bed, and they adjusted their hands so that Joe would still be holding his when they sat down. Luka didn't want to ask why.

"Luka, do you want to be adopted?" Joe asked him. Luka nodded slowly.

"Maybe. I guess I do. Do you?" he asked back.

Joe nodded. "More than anything in the world right now," he admitted. "I don't just want to get out of this orphanage. I want to have a real home, with a real family. I know it sounds weird for someone my age to say stuff like that, but every time I get rejected for adoption, it just hurts so much I don't even understand what I'm feeling sometimes."

Luka remained silent, letting Joe let out his bottled emotions. He wanted to say that he couldn't understand what being rejected feels like, because he only went on interviews twice in his life, and that was when he was really little.

"It doesn't sound weird at all, Joe" Luka replied after a moment of silence. "Everyone wants a home. We had that once, I guess".

"It's not just rejections that are bringing me down, Luka," Joe added sadly, sighing. His body slumped even more, his grip on Luka's hand tightening. Luka softly rubbed his thumb against Joe's own, as if telling him: It's okay. I'm here.

 "I'm always finding myself thinking that no one will ever adopt me and I'd be kicked out in two years , and it's just so scary that..." he looked down at his right arm, the arm that bled.

Joe looked at Luka straight in the eye. "Luka, I'm scared that I'll kill myself sometime soon."

Luka didn't know what to say. He knew about the concept of death from books, but never really thought someone as young as Joe would want it as soon as possible.

Before Luka could respond, Joe continued, talking as he stared at his feet. "I just don't want to feel any more pain. I don't want to see myself being rejected one more time. I don't want to hear another sympathetic apology. I don't want to catch them looking warily at my scars. I just want it all to stop..." his voice trailed off, and they were silent again.

They were quiet for a while. "Joe," Luka said to him, his voice soft. "I have something to show you." Before Joe could reply, Luka pulled up the left arm sleeve of his pajama top, to reveal almost ten cuts varying in size. They were not fresh, and some were starting to heal, while others remained stubborn scabs.

Joe said nothing but ran his finger through the jagged lines. "I...didn't know..." he replied. He looked back up at Joe, surprised. "But I thought you couldn't feel pain!"

Luka nodded.

"Then why do you cut? You can't feel a thing," Joe asked, his eyes wide.

Luka searched Joe's eyes; they looked like the sky at dawn. Yet, they were almost void of hope, of happiness. It was those same sad eyes that began everything.

"I cut so that you won't be alone," he said simply. Joe didn't answer immediately. Luka glanced down at his cuts. He forgot exactly when he did it, but he didn't regret it. But what Joe said was true: he didn't feel anything. All he saw was the blood seeping out, and that was it.

"The parents don't adopt you because they see your scars. So I thought that if ever I get forced to do an interview and they see mine, they won't think you're the only one here who's experiencing problems," Luka added to break the silence.

Joe stared at him, and Luka thought for a split second that he might start crying. "But...are you experiencing problems like mine?" Joe asked, his voice  breaking ever so slightly.

Luka shook his head. "I honestly am not. But I don't want you to be the odd one out," he replied matter-of-factly, shrugging like it was nothing.

They sat like that, their cuts revealed to the world, and they stared at each other, searching their souls. Suddenly, Joe pulled Luka in for a hug. Joe nestled his face in Luka's hair and Luka, unsure of what to do, awkwardly patted Luka's back.

As suddenly as Joe hugged him, he moved back, but he still had his arms around Luka's body. Their foreheads touched, and Luka saw Joe close his eyes. They sat like that, quiet, just breathing the cold air. Joe's left hand was on Luka's waist, almost touching his bare skin, his right hand gently caressing Luka's cheek. Luka did not know how to act, or whether he should touch Joe the same way he was touching him.

"What should I do now?" Luka whispered to him. Joe opened his eyes, and shook his head slightly.

"We don't have to do anything," Joe whispered back. For some reason, the moonlight made his eyes seem even more beautiful. Luka didn't even know if that was possible. He felt a strange sensation in his stomach as he stared into his eyes; they've never been this close before. 

"Just stay with me for a bit. Lie down with me."

And so they did. They lied down on Joe's warm bed with its small blood stains, lying down sideways so that they can face each other and still hold each other's hand. Luka closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he could not. When he opened his eyes halfway, Joe was still awake as well. Luka heard him chuckle, and Joe, whose back was facing back to the door, inched closer to Luka, his free hand pulling Luka closer towards his body.

Luka let Joe envelope him. Not a word was said between them. It was very comfortable in Joe's arms, to say the least. His warmth enveloped him like an oversized shirt straight out of the dryer. Joe continued to gently ruffle Luka's hair, sometimes kissing his forehead. His right hand roamed over Luka's torso, and oh, how smooth his skin felt. The softness and warmth Joe had let sleep take over Luka's body.

Joe gazed at Luka. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was steady.

Moonlight made his hair seem to glow. His bare skin, save for his arms and wrists, were smooth to the touch and had the color of cream. Joe slowly moved his hand up and down Luka's waist, sometimes resting for a few seconds on the boy's bare chest, feeling his heartbeat.

 Heart pounding, Joe snuck a kiss on the side of Luka's neck. Eyes still closed, Luka gave a sharp gasp in response to the kiss. Joe felt something stir deep inside him, something that felt like it was starting to explode. But no, now was not the time. Luka contentedly rested his head against Joe's chest. In a few seconds, his body surrendered to sleep once more. 

Seeing that Luka had fallen asleep, his rhythmic, steady breathing like a lullaby to his ears, Joe sat up and gazed at his young roommate. He knew what he was going to do, and though he wanted to stay the rest of the night with Luka, he couldn't stand to see the sun come up again.

"Thank you, Luka" he whispered to Luka, his lips near the young boy's ear. Luka stirred slightly, but went back to sleep. Joe smiled and kissed Luka, softly, his lips almost barely resting on his. It was as if kissing a cloud. 

"Thank you for everything."

Joe Hardy, a 16 year old orphan, was found dead the next morning at seven AM. He jumped from the orphanage's rooftop. He was featured in the morning news. How frightening it must be to hear about a suicide at seven in the morning. The reporter apologized to all those eating breakfast before showing a picture of Joe's body on the road.

All interviews were cancelled for a month. The younger orphans were told not to go out of their room and to have their blinds down, to avoid trauma. The older ones gathered outside in the dining room. Joe's body was taken away by the local ambulance before any of the orphans got to see it.

All the orphans, except Luka.

The Lady ran right up to Luka and Joe's room after they heard that Joe was dead. She frantically opened the door, breathing heavily after running up the stairs. She saw Luka on Joe's bed, his knees pulled to his chest. His pajama top was slightly unbuttoned after he and Joe were locked in an embrace that night, Joe feeling him up. His right index finger ran over his lips slowly, as if running a finger over the rim of a coffee mug. 

Luka looked right into the Lady's brown eyes.

"Luka," she panted, walking towards him cautiously. "Luka, are you alright?"

Luka raised his head up higher. Lady couldn't help but notice that his eyes were clear. There was no sign that he had cried. But surely, he must have heard the ambulances. He must have heard the fall.

"I'm fine, Lady" he replied. His tone was the same as it always was: as if he had no emotions at all. His eyes were blank. "I have been here all morning."

Lady closed the door behind her. "Luka, I have something to tell you," she began.

Before she could continue, Luka sat up properly and buttoned up his pajama top. "Will we go to the hospital later?" he asked as he buttoned up.

Lady blinked in surprise. "N-no, there's no need," she replied. "He's already dead."

"I see," Luka said. Lady thought he faltered a bit, his hands freezing up for half a second after she replied, but then again she might have been seeing things out of fatigue. So many preparations for the funeral had to be done. Oh, God, what will the parents think? was the only thought in her mind. 

"Has breakfast been made?" Luka asked her. Lady shook her head, not used to being asked like this by Luka.

"Are the others awake? I think they are. We have some eggs, right? How about some scrambled eggs?" Luka asked her, no longer making eye contact. He got up from the bed and turned his back to Lady as he arranged the pillow and folded the blanket.

Lady sighed heavily. "Luka..." she said in a soft, sad voice. "It's alright to cry. You don't have to pretend you don't care."

Luka turned to look back at her. Lady searched his face for any signs of emotion. There was nothing.

"Can I stay here for a bit more, Lady?" he asked suddenly. His voice was softer, but his face remained cold.

Lady nodded slowly. "Of course," she said. She opened the door and proceeded to exit. Before closing the door behind her, she took one last look at her odd case of an orphan. Luka sat back on the bed and leaned his back against the wall. He hugged his knees to his chest again, and stared at the wall. He must have seen her still looking, but he was still. She could barely even tell if he was breathing.

Lady sighed and closed the door. 

The funeral happened a week later. The day was still. Not all orphans could come. The priest presider was an old man, who constantly coughed and needed a big jug of water next to him. Lady wanted that they all wear black, but the older orphans who knew Joe better when he was alive did not even have decent formal wear. Luka came along of course, wearing a second hand navy blue polo and dark pants from donations. The pants were too short for him, and the blue polo too big.

The funeral went as it was supposed to. The mass, the long, sad drive to the graveyard by the countryside, and the throwing of the white flowers on the casket as it was lowered down into the ground. Joe's casket was a blue so dark it was almost black, with white sides. All the orphans were given a flower by Lady to throw in as it was lowered down.

During this time, Luka had walked off. Lady had already given him a flower, but was too preoccupied with the priests' coughing to notice him walk off. They were the only ones in the graveyard that day. The sun was there, but it was hiding behind clouds. The clouds looked like they would explode with rain anytime, but they stayed, making everything seem gray.

Luka walked absentmindedly among the gravestones. They were all starting to weather down. He was tearing the flower apart by the stem, and took away some parts of the flower itself, until it was very small.

Luka had walked past the tombstones, and entered the part of the graveyard with mausoleums. The richer dead were buried here many years ago. They were like small cement houses. Some even had gates painted with gold and big statue angels that reached its ceiling.

Luka saw one that had a ladder on the side. He looked back and saw that he was far from the rest. They all had their backs to him. He could no longer see Joe's coffin; the flower throwing must have started.

Luka turned back to the ladder and walked to it. Touching it, flakes of wood fell to the grass. It was abandoned for some reason. Or maybe just forgotten. Or put there for him.

The last thought stayed in Luka's mind as his eyes wandered to the top of the mausoleum. It was an old one, and had obviously gone through many storms and winters. The person buried in it died fifty years ago, of old age, judging from the long gap of years between his birth and death. 

Luka tucked the small flower in his pants pocket and held the ladder with both hands. It was made of thick wood, and it was steady. Luka took a breath and began to climb up, slowly at first, so that in case it wobbled he could step back down. But it didn't move, except for a slight creak on his first step.

Luka didn't know why he was climbing it. Was it curiosity, maybe? Luka didn't have so much time to ponder it. The mausoleum was smaller than the others, and in less than twenty seconds Luka had reached the top.

The top was a dirty gray, and had some puddles from past rains and dried leaves. Luka began to walk on it cautiously. Besides being smaller than the others in height, it was also smaller than the others in size. Take a wrong step and he would fall off to the rocks below.

Luka walked to the edge of the mausoleum roof. This one was by a cliff at the edge of the graveyard. There was a fence made there by the authorities, after someone fell into it many years ago unknowingly and died. The rocks sure were sharp below there. Luka wondered if he could see a skeleton, but the earth had made it into dust once again.

Just then, a strong gust of wind blew.  Luka looked down at his shoes and saw that one more step and he'd be falling down to those rocks.

Luka remembered his top bunk. He remembered his habit of jumping off every morning. Nobody but him could understand why he did it. It was a simple answer.

He wanted to feel.

He wanted to feel what it felt like to have what others called "pain" surge through your body. They said it never was a pleasant feeling. But how was Luka to judge? He didn't know what was considered to feel "pleasant" in the first place. He could only feel others skin touch his. 

He had felt Joe's hands wandering up and down his torso, touching him. He could feel his lips touch his scalp, and his lips against his neck. But that was all he had. He knew what it felt to be touched. Joe was the first to touch him that way, and probably the only one.

But Joe was gone now.

And for a moment when they were in each other's arms, Luka thought he would feel something. Anything. Other than Joe's lips brushing on his neck when they hugged. Other than Joe's large but gentle hands on his pale skin. Something that was called pain. Something hot. Cold. Hard. Soft. Something.

But there was nothing.

He was empty. He wanted Joe. Badly, he realized. He wanted to touch him back, the same way Joe had felt his skin, his chest, his neck. He wondered about kissing him. Would he feel something then?

"Is it so hard to be human?" he asked the wind as he watched it move on to the trees and the houses far away. 

Luka looked back down on the rocks. He was taking too long. What did Joe feel when he jumped? Luka wondered. What would it feel to jump from this high?

Luka turned around so that his back would be facing the gloomy view of the dark countryside beyond the graveyard. He looked up at the sky. He searched for the sun amongst the trees. Luka thought of Joe. He always did.

Joe's smile was the last thing on his mind when Luka took a step back into the open air. The last thing he saw was the sun-less sky.